A method of printing a three-dimensional (3D) color object, layer-by-layer, comprises: obtaining a 3D CAD specification defining a 3D geometry and a surface color distribution for the color object to be printed, defining regions on a surface of the color object; defining colors for each region based on the CAD specification; determining, using the 3D geometry of the specification, conditions applying at respective regions that are liable to cause color variation, such that using the colors as defined at the respective regions may give rise to a coloration error; selecting color corrections defined for respective determined conditions; correcting the defined colors; and printing the 3D color object with the color corrections.
Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
3. The 3D color printer of claim 2, configured to compile said LUT by printing various color stack compositions and measuring the resulting colors.
4. The 3D color printer of claim 2, wherein said arrangement of voxels comprises up to and not including 10 voxels.
5. The 3D color printer of claim 2, wherein the thickness of said color shell is calculated relative to the extinction depth of the materials used.
6. The 3D color printer of claim 2, wherein the conflicting instances are selected from junctions between faces, sharp edges and thin parts.
7. The 3D color printer of claim 6, wherein the thin part is a thin wall.
8. The 3D color printer of claim 2, configured to carry out said color correction by selecting the best match of color stacks from a library of color combinations, measuring a distance between the actual colors and the colors provided by the library, and modifying the color stacks provided by the library to better fit the actual colors.
9. The 3D color printer of claim 8, configured to carry out said modifying of color stacks by applying a model predicting color change as a function of inks or placing lighter colored inks at the inner layers of the stack.
10. The 3D color printer of claim 2, wherein said color correction involves the use of a dithering process between voxels of interfering color stacks.
11. The 3D color printer of claim 10, wherein said dithering process comprises selecting different dithering vectors of voxels for each of said requested colors and combining said dithering vectors of voxels to find a combination requiring a minimal amount of voxel overwriting.
12. The 3D color printer of claim 11, wherein combining said dithering vectors of voxels is performed via a tail matching algorithm that takes into account collisions between neighboring dithering stacks.
13. The 3D color printer of claim 12, wherein said tail matching algorithm comprises looking for vectors which have the same tail of common colors in the inner part of the color stack.
14. The 3D color printer of claim 13, wherein said tail matching algorithm comprises selecting the combination of vectors having the longest length common tail.
15. The 3D color printer of claim 14, wherein said LUT is compiled according to a specific printing condition.
16. The 3D color printer of claim 15, wherein said printing condition comprises one or more predetermined levels of UV exposure.
18. The 3D color printer of claim 17, wherein said printing conditions are selected from UV exposure level, sample orientation on tray, gloss/matte print mode, and any combination thereof.
19. The 3D color printer of claim 17, wherein said actual printed color compositions are based on C, M, Y, white and black color materials.
20. The 3D color printer of claim 17, wherein said color values are represented by one of RGB color coordinates, CIE Lab coordinates, HSL, LCH and Grey Values.
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July 8, 2021
January 16, 2024
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